I Want to Watch Michelle Malkin Cry

A long-expected day finally has arrived: Hispanics now outnumber White non-Hispanics in California, or will before spring turns into summer. The Golden State is the second state to achieve this, after New Mexico, but the Land of Enchantment is considerably smaller (and has always been its own socio-cultural-political curiosity), so this is a considerably more significant event.

Hispanics are not a majority in the state, just a plurality. They’re at an estimated 39%, to White non-Hispanics’ 38.8%. Asians are at about 13%, with African-Americans just under 6%.

A state that was once controlled by Mexico, before Manifest Destiny came along and ordained that God wanted white folks from Kansas and Missouri to have it, is now heavily populated by the runaway children of Mexico and their offspring. An enormous swath of oceanfront property has been reclaimed without a formal declaration of war.

And somewhere Michelle Malkin, America’s most nativist immigrant-child is having a heart attack, or at least will probably pretend one to get more clicks. But Navarette’s talking about the irony of the situation, and here’s his real claim, the truth of which Malkin and her ilk (bad people always have an ilk, right?) refuse to accept.

Forget what you’ve heard about a reconquista: the fabled reconquering of the Southwest by Mexican-Americans on behalf of Mexico. That’s loco. Most Mexican-Americans are barely on speaking terms with Mexico. We (I am among them) understand that our neighbor had no room in its economy for our dark-skinned, uneducated parents and grandparents, who were forced to go north. Now, most of us reciprocate and have little room in our hearts for Mexico. Our loyalty is to the United States. Even if we were speaking to our Mexican brethren, we’d be conversing in different languages. Most Mexicans speak Spanish, and about 80% of U.S. Latinos speak English.

This is not a temporary event. Even absent further immigration, the differing direction trends of Hispanics and White non-Hispanics are only going to continue, based on the age demographics of the two groups

And of course this matters for U.S. politics, because California is the biggest prize in presidential elections, with 45% more electoral votes than 2nd place Texas. And after a couple of decades of both major parties fighting for the Hispanic vote, the Democrats are winning it hands down. Hispanics are still a smaller proportion of voters in California than White non-Hispanics, but with a younger Latino population, and an older White non-Hispanic population, Latino strength is only going to continue to grow.

But Republicans’ Hispanic problem is not limited to California. The Hispanic population of Texas—which as we’ve seen has the second largest number of electoral votes—is poised to surpass the White non-Hispanic population, perhaps by the time of the 2020 presidential election. And while Texas Hispanics are somewhat more likely to be Republican than Hispanics nationally, they still favor the Democrats.

That’s 93 out of 270 electoral votes—over one-third—that potentially get locked in for the Democrats before the campaigns start.

Since at least the early ‘90s, if not before, political strategists have been looking at the growing Hispanic population and hoping to harvest it. Although the Democrats traditionally have been the party of ethnic minority Catholics (Irish, Italians, Poles) Republicans have long thought they might be able to win Hispanics over on “family value” issues, particularly abortion, which in the ‘80s became a wedge issue for divorcing Catholics from the Democratic Party (Reagan allegedly said, “Hispanics are already Republican, they just don’t know it.”) And any Southern Californian whose been to the park on a Sunday afternoon can attest to the family orientation of the Hispanic community.

They’re also relatively accepting of homosexuality, and they are more supportive than the general population of same-sex marriage. We normally don’t think of Hispanics as supportive of homosexuality. There is a tendency, I think, to focus on the conservativeness of Mexican culture, and perhaps to implicitly operate off the stereotype of the machismo that sometimes is prevalent in that culture. It’s time to start paying closer attention.

This is going to be a tough demographic battle for the GOP. I’m not a Democrat, so I’m not rejoicing, I’m not a Republican, so I’m not gnashing my teeth, and I’m not a Hispanic so I have no personal stake in the outcome. But I am sitting on the sidelines with a big bucket of popcorn, watching with great interest to see how this all plays out.

When Malkin attacked Colbert for his Ching Chong Foundation skit he said “This cuts deep, especially since I learned everything about the Asian American experience from reading Michelle Malkin’s 2004 book, In Defense of Internment. It turns out they had it coming.”

I’d rather laugh at her expense than see her cry. It’ll make me all emotional and stuff.Report

From a certain point of view, our war(s) over the Philippines were about liberating them from the Spanish and the Japanese, not about conquest. (that point for view ignores the entirety of the Philippine Insurrection, of course)Report

I really do not want to see her cry. I really, really don’t. I can’t think of much that would be less appealing. But if she does cry, thank god her makeup is good-enough quality and won’t run black streaks over her face.Report

The photo of Malkin that I’ve seen accompanying her column always reminded me of a Vulcan. Like she should have greenish skin, pointy ears, and go by the name T’Chelle. It’s hard to fit “crying” into that image.Report

Considering the math I don’t see how Asians could possibly be wrong about affirmative action screwing them over in the UC system. Race based AA is a problematic policy to begin with and when it starts regularily churning out results like directly harming the interests of one historically persecuted minority to “help” another persecuted minority then you can understand why circular firing squads comparing who was more persecuted are in danger of forming. Frankly I still don’t get why we don’t simply switch to class or income based AA instead.Report

Because even though African Americans have higher poverty rates, there’s a greater absolute number of poor whites, so income/class-based AA could end up helping them and not leaving enough seats for poor black students.Report

Even if that’s true, the Asian-American community in general has a pretty strong sense of history, which means they’re not likely to take kindly to movements that are similar to those like the ones that ended up with the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924.Report

Prof. I can see that as being a serious problem but without the same circular firing squad mentality forming I am struggling with a solution.

Nob, I agree the Asian-American community has a strong sense of history which is probably why they strongly dislike the idea of having their children locked out of universities and thus are not supportive of race based AA.Report

Maybe, but “locked out” of universities is a relative thing, vs. the more concrete discrimination faced by immigrants from efforts to legislate them into second class status. Again, the history of discrimination on that front is MUCH more raw than children going to a tier 1.5 school instead of a tier 1 school.Report

In addition to James’ point, the wealth, social, and geographical differences between white families and black families are pretty major even if you’re controlling for income. Ta-Nehisi Coates had some excellent posts on this; two points I remember are that black families tend to have much lower wealth than white families even if they’re middle-class in terms of income (due to housing discrimination, redlining, and such), and that middle-class and even wealthy black families are very likely to live in low-income neighbourhoods, whereas white families are not.

I doubt it’s that simple. Centuries of slavery followed by a century and a half of discrimination are going to have a wide range of effects, many of which aren’t simple to measure or to slot into some model.Report

“Non-Hispanic whites will probably still have a structural advantage for a while because of economic wealth and other factors. I am not sure how long this will last thoug”

It’s not honestly deniable that the GOP is betting heavily on voter suppression. They can keep Texas red for a while, by suppressing the Hispanic vote. They can probably keep several other states consistently red, by suppressing votes.Report

One of the problems with ‘dog whistles’ is that others can occasionally hear them too. And the right has kept boosting the volume so much that even those who can’t technically hear them notice that their ears are bleeding 🙂Report

When I see people engage in hand-wringing over demographic changes, I wish it were because of things like election outcomes. But it isn’t. If it were just about losing popular support, they’d evaluate how they can gain that support. No. It’s about white people, men, whomever losing their ill-gained power.Report

“They’re also relatively accepting of homosexuality, and they are more supportive than the general population of same-sex marriage.”

I wonder how much of this is the age demographic profile of the hispanic population. *Young* people favor same sex marriage much more than old people, and the hispanic population skews a bit young – and that there are far more old white people in America than any other kind of old people due to simply who was here 50 years ago.Report

@kolohe , i suppose that’s some of it, but I think it really boils down to the difference between “family values” as a political talking point and “family values” as practiced by actual families.

I don’t consider myself Hispanic from a racial standpoint, but my mother’s mother’s mother immigrated from Mexico, and her cultural influence has had a out-sized influence on our family dynamics.

My great-grandparents had five children. My grandparents had seven. Family is big, defined in broad terms, and supportive: Of course not everybody is absolutely friendly all the time, but there’s an expectation that you’re supposed to be friends, and you’re supposed to provide a support structure.

That’s not really an environment that favors homophobia in this day and age. If gay family members are out of the closet, that familial closeness forces others to confront any prejudices. And once you’ve gotten over that big barrier from “the thing you do is evil” to “live and let live”, that value for families is going to push people all the way to “looking forward to your wedding” right quick.Report

One of the most interesting things about Michelle Malkin is that she went to Oberlin. This fact seems odd at first hearing, but really makes perfect sense. Her prose is exactly the sort of overwrought, jargony, mixed metaphor-heavy nonsensical jibber jabber that one might expect from an over-eager liberal arts college undergrad. It’s just in service of right wing talking points.Report

Damn you, James, and your clever titles. I was suckered into reading this at the prospect of an operatically-suffering Michelle Malkin, and was instead suckered into an analysis of changing secular population demographics.Report

I think that it’s consistent and humane thinking — a preference for responsible behavior that decreases unwanted pregnancy as much as possible (responsible meaning accessing and using contraceptives responsibly, not just abstinence); and recognition that sometimes things go wrong for reasons we should not judge; and that we value a culture of life, which also respects the life of the woman who finds herself pregnant.Report

A lot of low income religious people have these beliefs, in my anecdotal experience. I praise them for continuing to value life, and also understanding that shit happens, and sometimes you can’t do what you’d like.Report

I agree with both Dragonfrog and zic, but didn’t want to digress in my post. In the comments, though, is a perfect place for such a digression. My only surprise is that the combination is eo pronounced in a particular ethnic group. It’d be interesting to further explore what’s going on there.Report

That is an interesting question – to what degree is that an exception among Latinos (and, as you noted in the article, since Latinos skew somewhat young and whites somewhat old, to what extent is does it remain if you correct for age).Report

That’s pretty much what I was thinking – being both against people taking drugs and against drug prohibition by the state is finally getting understood. The same position with respect to other things including abortion seems more or less advanced depending on the issue, though it doesn’t seem like there should be much of a leap in logic from one to another.Report

It’s surprising if you’ve been using pro-life as short for “thinks abortion should be illegal” and pro-choice as short for “thinks abortion should be legal”. It’s difficult to see how you can believe both of those.

If the combination means wanting abortion to be legal but wishing it to be rare I doubt you’ll find a lot of self identified pro-lifers who would disagree. To the best of my knowledge no one is arguing that there should be more abortions.Report

In a number of arguments I’ve seen, someone opens with “I’m pro-life…” and the question quickly comes “But what about rapeincestmotherslifeindanger?” and they say “well, of course *THAT*’s okay” and the answer comes, let’s all give it together: “Then you’re pro-choice”.

None. In her first run I’d only been in Michigan a year, had no expectation of remaining here, and was commuting to Illinois, so I neither voted nor paid much attention,* beyond noticing that her opponent, Dick Posthumus had a personality to match his last name. (He did win admiration from me, though, because when he was asked what he’d do if he lost the election, he simply said, “I’ll go back to my farm.”)

When she ran for re-election, even my Democratic friends agreed she didn’t really deserve a second term, but of course they weren’t going to vote GOP. I don’t remember if I voted or not, but I know I didn’t vote for her.

*I don’t like to vote if I have no long-term commitment to a place.Report

Tell me about it. On one side of my family we can trace back to some of the original Spanish settlers in America. In fact there are descendants that are involved in a long-running, insanely-complicated and probably ultimately-fruitless legal action against the US Government, to get monies they believe they are technically owed as a result of treaties/deeds/land changing hands between the US Govt. and Spain (psst, nobody tell the Native Americans who were, you know, there first). But I don’t claim Hispanic ancestry (though I AM an excellent lover).Report

Also, don’t assume that first language is the same thing as preferred language or language of fluency. Children born into Spanish-speaking homes in the US still typically speak English with as much or more fluency than they speak Spanish.Report

From August 2018 through February 2019, AVENATTI defrauded a client (“Victim-1”) by diverting money owed to Victim-1 to AVENATTI’s control and use. After assisting Victim-1 in securing a book contract, AVENATTI allegedly stole a significant portion of Victim-1’s advance on that contract. He did so by, among other things, sending a fraudulent and unauthorized letter purporting to contain Victim-1’s signature to Victim-1’s literary agent, which instructed the agent to send payments not to Victim-1 but to a bank account controlled by AVENATTI. As alleged, Victim-1 had not signed or authorized the letter, and did not even know of its existence.

Specifically, prior to Victim-1’s literary agent wiring the second of four installment payments due to Victim-1 as part of the book advance, AVENATTI sent a letter to Victim-1’s literary agent purportedly signed by Victim-1 that instructed the literary agent to send all future payments to a client trust account in Victim-1’s name and controlled by AVENATTI. The literary agent then wired $148,750 to the account, which AVENATTI promptly began spending for his own purposes, including on airfare, hotels, car services, restaurants and meal delivery, online retailers, payroll for his law firm and another business he owned, and insurance. When Victim-1 began inquiring of AVENATTI as to why Victim-1 had not received the second installment, AVENATTI lied to Victim-1, telling Victim-1 that he was still attempting to obtain the payment from Victim-1’s publisher. Approximately one month after diverting the payment, AVENATTI used funds recently received from another source to pay $148,750 to Victim-1, so that Victim-1 would not realize that AVENATTI had previously taken and used Victim-1’s money.

Approximately one week later, pursuant to AVENATTI’s earlier fraudulent instructions, the literary agent sent another payment of $148,750 of Victim-1’s book advance to the client account controlled by AVENATTI. AVENATTI promptly began spending the money for his own purposes, including to make payments to individuals with whom AVENATTI had a personal relationship, to make a monthly lease payment on a luxury automobile, and to pay for airfare, dry cleaning, hotels, restaurants and meals, payroll, and insurance costs. Moreover, to conceal his scheme, and despite repeated requests to AVENATTI, as Victim-1’s lawyer, for assistance in obtaining the book payment that Victim-1 believed was missing, AVENATTI led Victim-1 to believe that Victim-1’s publisher was refusing to make the payment to the literary agent, when, as AVENATTI knew, the publisher had made the payment to the literary agent, who had then sent the money to AVENATTI pursuant to AVENATTI’s fraudulent instructions.

Here are my principal conclusions:1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.4. Few members of Congress have read the report.

Rep. Justin Amash, a critic of President Trump who entertained a run against him in 2020, became the first Republican congressman to say the president “engaged in impeachable conduct.”

The Michigan lawmaker, often the lone Trump dissenter on his side of the aisle, shared his conclusions in a lengthy Twitter thread after reviewing the full special counsel report.

Amash wrote that after reading the 448-page report, he’d concluded that not only did Robert S. Mueller’s team show Trump attempting to obstruct justice, but that Attorney General William Barr had “deliberately misrepresented” the findings and that few members of Congress had even read it. “Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” Amash wrote.

The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The president often says the report found “no collusion, no obstruction,” though neither is true. Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, which did interfere in the 2016 election. He did not rule on the obstruction of justice question, saying it was something Congress should determine.

Amash, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, declined on Sunday to rule out a possible 2020 presidential run as a Libertarian candidate.

"Well, I would never rule anything out. That's not on my radar right now," he said of a 2020 bid to Tapper. "But I think that it is important that we have someone in there who is presenting a vision for America that is different from what these two parties are presenting."

Amash told Tapper he believes there is a "wild amount of partisan rhetoric on both sides" and that "Congress is totally broken."

"I think that we need to return to basic American principles, talk about what we have in common as a people -- because I believe we have a lot in common as Americans -- and try to move forward together, rather than fighting each other all the time," Amash said.

Question remains, is Justin Amash going to join any Democrat effort to curtail the president, or is he using this as prelude to something else -- such as his own run for the White House? Drama.

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Elizabeth Warren Is Rooting for Daenerys Targaryen in ‘Game of Thrones’

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is a Game of Thrones fan, and her favorite character is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Daenerys “Stormborn” Targaryen, who Warren says, “has been my favorite from the first moment she walked through fire.” We learned this in a column Warren wrote for The Cut published Sunday evening.

In the piece, Warren outlines her reasons for her fandom. Daenerys is fair, she fights for the people, and she wants to end slavery. But in talking about Daenerys, Warren can also, subtly, talk about herself. Like the paragraph below, in which she describes the Dragon Queen—or is she describing herself?

“This is a revolutionary idea, in Westeros or anywhere else. A queen who declares that she doesn’t serve the interests of the rich and powerful? A ruler who doesn’t want to control the political system but to break the system as it is known? It’s no wonder that the people she meets in Westeros are skeptical. Skeptical, because they’ve seen another kind of woman on the Iron Throne: the villain we love to hate, Queen Cersei of Casterly Rock.”

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If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'ld jump the life to come. But [...]